DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - so tried of people thinking that spending lots of $ on PC stuff = mad PC skills!

**weO1bVp1** · 08-02-2010, 03:15 AM

My biggest project was to take a laptop with the following specs:

celeron 700mhz
64mb of ram
10GB 4200rpm HDD
ATI rage mobility 4mb
8x CD-rom

and turn it into a machine capable of playing dvds.

First I replaced the 700mhz celeron with an 800mhz Pentium III, the multi was locked, so it was basically a 700mhz pentium III (celerons and pentiums had the same FSB).

I then plugged in an extra 128 mb of ram, that helped quite a bit.

Next the machine had only 1 usb port (really for a mouse), 1 PCMCIA slot (which I wanted for something later) and no inbuilt lan, so how to get it connected to the outside world? Well I took out the internal mini pci modem and replaced it with a intel 2200BG wireless card and routed an aerial in the case to give it internal 54G wireless [thumbup]

Next couple of changes were simple, an 8x slim DVD-rom and 7200rpm 80gig HDD with a copy of windows XP home. The faster hard drive helped off set the still small amount of ram.

Final bit was a PCMCIA audigy 2 ZS sound card (the one with HARDWARE sound acceleration [thumbup]) with 5.1 surround sound support that bypassed the AWFUL internal sound card

It had an external VGA port to connect it to a larger monitor.

The machine was capable of playing DVDs with full 5.1 sound without dropping any frames [rofl]

IMO what hardware you have is no issue, its what you can get out of it for what it is.

08-02-2010, 03:15 AM	#58
weO1bVp1 Join Date Nov 2005 Posts 438 Senior Member	My biggest project was to take a laptop with the following specs: celeron 700mhz 64mb of ram 10GB 4200rpm HDD ATI rage mobility 4mb 8x CD-rom and turn it into a machine capable of playing dvds. First I replaced the 700mhz celeron with an 800mhz Pentium III, the multi was locked, so it was basically a 700mhz pentium III (celerons and pentiums had the same FSB). I then plugged in an extra 128 mb of ram, that helped quite a bit. Next the machine had only 1 usb port (really for a mouse), 1 PCMCIA slot (which I wanted for something later) and no inbuilt lan, so how to get it connected to the outside world? Well I took out the internal mini pci modem and replaced it with a intel 2200BG wireless card and routed an aerial in the case to give it internal 54G wireless [thumbup] Next couple of changes were simple, an 8x slim DVD-rom and 7200rpm 80gig HDD with a copy of windows XP home. The faster hard drive helped off set the still small amount of ram. Final bit was a PCMCIA audigy 2 ZS sound card (the one with HARDWARE sound acceleration [thumbup]) with 5.1 surround sound support that bypassed the AWFUL internal sound card It had an external VGA port to connect it to a larger monitor. The machine was capable of playing DVDs with full 5.1 sound without dropping any frames [rofl] IMO what hardware you have is no issue, its what you can get out of it for what it is.
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